Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure consisting of external cardiac massage and artificial respiration that constitutes the first treatment for a person who has collapsed, has no pulse and has stopped breathing. CPR treatment attempts to restore circulation of the blood and prevent death or brain damage due to lack of oxygen. Survival from cardiac arrest within 4 minutes of collapse is primarily dependent on rapid defibrillation, but thereafter maintaining coronary and cerebral perfusion of at least 25% of baseline is essential for survival. The only practical way of doing this outside of a hospital is by delivering external chest compressions of at least 4 cm at a rate of about 100 per minute. Extensive research currently ongoing has shown that chest compressions delivered by hand by experienced emergency medical service (EMS) responders are adequate only 40% of the time and there are long periods when no chest compressions are given (high “Hands-off Ratio”). It follows that the chest compressions delivery by hand by a lay responder are expected to be even more inadequate.
One of the biggest concerns in CPR is the lack of feedback to the lay first responder or professional resuscitator. There is a wealth of data flowing from researchers regarding the quality of CPR; the impact of real time feedback to rescuers; the relationship between the force applied to the chest and the depth of the resulting compression; and the clinical outcomes from improved CPR. Specifically, the amount of applied pressure, frequency and depth of chest compressions administered to the patient needs to be adequate for CPR to be successful. Although effective training and simulation manikins exist; small non-intrusive devices to provide real-time feedback to the resuscitator do not exist. This lack of real-time feedback during CPR removes the ability to adjust the stimuli (i.e., amount of applied pressure and frequency of chest compressions) to improve the effectiveness of the CPR.
Accordingly, there is a need for a non-intrusive, real-time, low cost, readily available feedback device to measure and assess administered pressure during CPR on real patients.